snitiT OF THE PRESS. kditohial ormicBft of thi lbadiso jourhau CPOB CtJBRKST TOPICS COM PILKD EVKBY DAT FOB THI EVENING TKLBGBAFH. Morgan on Manhood. From the N. Y. Tribune. General George Washington Morgan ad dressed the Democracy of Columbus, Ohio, on the 31st ultimo, for the express purpose of proving that persons of African descent are not human beings; and he did prove it to the satisfaction of the human Democracy, and of himself, as a proud and pure-blooded Cauoa Blon. General George Washington Morgan, We suppose, is of Welsh origin, and every Welshman, it is well known, is lineally de scended from Adam, whereas other bipeds, bearing the form of man, come from the Lord knows who. General George Washington Morgan generously concedes, as a Welsh man, certain privileges to other white folks with shorter pedigrees; but he has a great objection to admitting either the free dom or equality of mankind in general. His arguments against negro suffrage are all curi ous, but some of them are noble and jretty enough to quote. "Why," he asks, "is the rieht whale never found out of the Arctio seas r and why is the sperm whale never found in the Arctio waters 1 Why does the golden-hued dolphin of the Mediterraue tn never pass the Straits of Gibraltar, although he swims with five times the velocity a ship can sail f Why, etc etc" And so the Gene ral goes on to argue that blacks should not Tote in Ohio because condors never leave Sonth Amerioa, because the ostrich sticks to Africa, because there are no elephants in Europe, because camels have two humps, and dromedaries only ono, and the poor came leoparda none at all. White men should rule the world because eagles rule the air, lions the jungle, and wholes the sea; because sharks are not shad, vultures are not doves, and oak trees are not hickories; because Ethiopians cannot change their skins nor. leopards their spots (Jeremiah ziii, 23). These are the principal arguments of this most zoological General. But there is one other which, in common fairness, we must not withhold. The orang-outang of Africa i3 black; the orang-outang of Asia is brown 1 This is what may be called a settler. But the General has other arguments ? Who invented the printing press 1 A white man 1 Who in Tented the steam engine. A white man ! Who conquered the lightning ? A white man ! To which last we expected the corollary, Who is oftenest struck by lightning ? The black man I But we didn't find it anywhere in the - speech, although we found almost everything else horses, dolphins, orango-utangs, Colum bus, Bushmen, Lord Brougham, the Jews in Malabar, fair-browed Anglo-Saxons, the King of Congo, the great Democratic party, and the Bohan Upas. This speech of the General's making is an excellent specimen of the kind to which it belongs. We have read many gross of these ethnological arguments, and they are mostly a confused jumble of half-understood scien tific facts, with a mixture of falsities and of fancies. They are all based upon the fallacy that the civilization of a race is impossible because it never has been civilized, as if the ""Egyptian civilization did not precede the Grecian, the Grecian the lioinan, the latter that of the middle ages. There is no race of which it would not be possible to say hard things; there is no race, however degraded, of which any honest man of science can say anything worse than that its time has not come. Dahomey itself is not more degraded, not more savage, not more coarsely superstitious, than were the Anglo-Saxons iu their early begin nings. What would a cultivated lloman have said to the writer who predicted the future greatness of the Briton3 ? What would Solomon have said to anybody prophesying the subsequent condition of his nation ? What would a polished Athenian have said if the oracles of his land had foretold the imperial greatness of a horde of muscular settlers upon the banks of the Tiber f The fate of nations id in the womb of Time; the destiny of races is to be determined by causes of the nature of which we can make only stammering and unintelligent guesse3. No body has a right to argue of the conditions of African progress in America from the state of progress in Africa itself. To do so is at once ungenerous, cruel, and sophistical; to do so is Bhamefully to ignore the essential modifica tions which the race has unergone upon this continent. But although we are sometimes betrayed into this line of discussion by the folly of the George Washington Morgans and the Pollards, and the rest of the gentry who dabble in his tory, and go about making a muddle of all science, and indeed of all human learning, we always return with relief to the impregnable position that the American idea is that "all men are born free and equal." Jefferson says they are; General Washington says they are; General George Washington Morgan says they are not. Admitting the latter savant to be right, we claim then that such a thing as de mocracy is impossible in the United States, and that there must be an end of all our dreams of the possibility of p pular govern ment. Becaose the moment you begin to .modify the dogma, that moment you become involved in inextricable confusion and self contradiction, and open the way for the intro duction of the monarchical, or, at least, the aristocratical scheme of government, for which, we confess, we are not quite ready. Th Southern Future. fVom the Y. Timet. . There is much unnecessary gloom and wail ing in the South. H chiefly proceeds from the politicians, who, having always lived by office or by blockade-running, hastened to Washing ton to obtain a dispensation, and thus labored to repair the broken ligaments of party. These predatory adventurers, deprived of office and of the possibility of office, utter loud howls of despairing rapacity, and declare the South ruined because they are no longer on the pay-roll. , The South has great power and reserved resources, no less important to themselves than to us. Tltere are, however, some errors po constantly taught by the place-hunters, that the whole people begin to believe they are true. One of these errors is that the South is to pass under the domination of the freedmen. All sensible men in the Mouth have acquiesced in leeal and political emancipation. The indica tions are undoubted that no discriminations of these right will be embodied in the law or in the dealings between white and black. The ensuing election will terminate much of the excitement, for the indillerence of the poll ticians to the voter ajur the election is noto rious. The relations between employer and operative will then adjust themselves. But the apprehension of colored supremacy has entered into the popular mind here as wall THE DAILr EVENING TELEGRAPH PHILADELPHIA, WEDNESDAY, as at the Sonth; and as it will impede emigra tion to the Sonth, it is as well to disabuse the pnblio mind of the error. The gross number of white males in the Southern States ts 2,138,300; that of the freedmen is 1,2!U,W41. It will be seen, therefore, that the white race is in excess of the colored in the Southern States more than a quarter of a million of men. The total distribution of these num bers shows that there is a majority of -370 freedmen in Mississippi, and of ;439 in South Carolina. As the advocate of harmony be tween the races on the basis of equal legal rightf , we desire the freedmen to remember that the limitation of the franchise does not affeot the comparative numerical ability of the two races; but that this majority of a quarter of a million of whites remain to work that nature will evnanaipate them in a few years. That while there can be no more black immigration into the South, there will be a large white immigration, with a relatively large whito increase. The supremacy of the colored race will be but temporary and local. They should therefore take their rights and be satisfied. They should not lay the founda tion of any discontent which may be revenged by retaliation at a future period. Such is our advice, lhe white race are in little danger of losing any right which they are not willing to concede. The colored race should observe moderation at the present to prevent retalia tion in the future. The South should, moreover, learn the truth that it is no longer an equal section. It is, in deed, no longer a section at all, and should harden to desectionalize itself. It should be content to pass into the masses of the nation, only claiming such power as its representative nnnibers and substance entitle it to. The great staples of Southern production are as much objects of national com em as the gold of California. It has been shown by the autho rity of Hunt's Mtrchants1 Magazine, that the proportion of values exported by the South during the war is greater, in respect to the gross national values imported, than it was before the war. This involves a necessity on the part of the natives to repair the levee3 and deepen the channel of the Mississippi, as also to afford the cotton planter and opera tive all the aid which the Government can bestow. The competition between the Eng lish cotton-grower and the American ootton grower the competition between the Ameri can cotton-spinner, and the English cotton-spinner, is becoming of eminent Im portance. The British Government has lent its aid to its own planters and Spinners. Shall the United States keep up a war of disturbance against an interest so important and so much discouraged ? It cannot be. Nor will the abolition sentiment of the world tolerate the continuance of slavery iu Cuba merely be cause they . thereby obtain chnaper sugar. Cuba will be .acquired by the United States, and tLe disgrace of paying a kouuty to slave grown foreign sugars, at the expense of free grown domestic sugar, will be removed. It is in the commercial expansion of the South, not only by the Gulf front, but by the radial lines penetrating interior Mexico, that the great West and the South can derive an immense accession to their prosperity.' The advisers of the South have been always op posed to commerce. They had the narrow idea that a nation might be free and prosper ous upon its riding horses and firearms alone. In this they only adopted the idea of the Honveds and Camanches, the first of which was oonquered by Austrian and Russian am munition and food, and the other will be soon worn out by the attrition of whisky and tho j revolver. So the Southern statesmen neither wanted ships nor manufactures, preferring to create a dependence beyond the ocean, which should take those mechanical departments of j defense off their hands. Eugland adroitly i used and abandoned them. The commerce of the South Seas would be far better and i more profitable to the South than emigration to Brazil or Tuspau. Men may stay at home in the charming climate of Virginia or Loui siana or Kentucky, and make a maintenance upon the products of the torrid tone. Thi3 is shown by the example of populous England and thrifty Holland. The immense and ever expanding horizon of Western civilization will require more and more the products of the equatorial regions. These caunot be grown by artificial means elsewhere. They must be drawn from the hot-house of nature, where the sugar-cane and the cocoauut mature without regulation by the thermometer. Railroads and steam lines will connect these Western con sumers with these productions. Why should not the Gulf ports of the nation conduct this agency? The direct trade between the West and Europe will be always the property of New York and her sister Atlantic cities, be cause they lie on the trade line which connects these interests, but tl e South Sea trade, never yet fully really realized from the days of Ra leigh and Hawkins to the present, is a sub stantial commerce,' and will separate itself from that of Europe as has been indicated. Southern manufactures must improve. The same statesmen have taught that the two field-workers out of every five on a given population should maintain three non-producers. The experience of modern civiliza tion teaches that the other three can aid in their own maintenance without in any manner impairing the efficiency of the field-worker. The couth is not ail capable ol staple pro duct. Much of its territory U mountainous and subject to early floats, as Kentucky, Ten nessee, upper Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina. It has always occurred to us that because one man in the Delta lived by the cul ture of sugar, there is no especial reason why another living near a mountain cataract In Georgia, or that Switzerland of America lennessee should not forge iron or spin cot ton. Mr. Calhoun thought otherwise, and so turned over the cotton-spinning to England or JNew r.nglana. . The Southern people have tho raw material and provisions for cotton manufacture. They have thousands of women and children who were subsisted last year on Inderal rations. They must have there a pauper system or a labor system poorhouses or factories. To these impoverished people, iu great part of our own color, may be added the colored women and children who are and are to be educated. They are not disposed, we are told, to go into the cotton-field; what is to prevent their beooruing operatives in a cotton mill? Nothing except that hereditary hostility to manufacture which made John Randolph say he would "go half a mile out of his way to a sneep," could restrain cotton manufao lure. Emancipation UianninMinn haa niirn K w n. . "J l.VJU iuuiu n iwB i ,,e domand tor manufactures clad W r th,e "lave 8tem- Theu tha Pinter The .iB 8laTes iu ooarfl garments. iwenty-nve dollars per annum in dry goods manferno8diir8' aud utttn11 8f reS man now provides for himself. He wear more clothes, and of better quality. He buys more groceries. He even Idda I Vatoh and Jewelry to his purchases. As a consequence, he expends an average of perhapa fioo each on his family. This is five times as much ex pended in merchandise as before. Four times as much of the ootton money goes to the mer chant and manufacturer as before. It is a home demand and a home market, and very fuw peoples In tha world would sooru or delay to employ it. Indeed, the necessity of com bining the products of the plough and spindle with as little intermediary agency as possible, will ultimately transfer some of the mills of the Merrimao to the waterfalls possibly to the coal-yards of the Southorn States and cities. If those who now inhabit the country will not employ these extraordinary advantages, others will come. The future of the South is then within its own control. But it is proper to say that if this rich region should be permitted to relapse into non-production by its present population, they will be succeeded, as the Indians have been, by those who will realize its vast capa cities. Liko the inactive steward who hid the talenls confided to him, the treasures of the South must inevitably fall into -4iands that will appreciate and make them available. A New Religion Wauled for the Nation. From the A'. Y. Herald. Man, it has been said, is a religious animal. The history of the race warrants the definition. Since tho days of Adam up to the present time we have not been without our gods many aud our lords many; nor have any portions of the human family ever been found in circum stances so degraded and brutal that it could be said of them they were without belief in a hicher nd unseen Power. Strict obedience to the gods, or to the religious systems which have been set up ia their name, has not always been a truthful predicate of the race, but religiosity in some shape or form has been an unfailing characteristic The cods, we have said, have been nume rous. We might add"lbey have been as diver- silied as they have been numerous. me gods of the early ilmdoo mythology are as unlike the deities of Egypt as these are unlike the deities of the Greeks and the Romans; and the deities of the Greeks and the Romans have but little in common with the eods whose names have been preserved in the mythologies of Northern Europe. Nor ha3 this diversity been limited by natioual bounda ries only; for the gods of one nation have not differed more from tho gods of another nation than the gods of each separate nation have differed from one another, There is one liupresnion whi h most men wl.o have looked into the auc ent mythologies find it difficult to resist, and that is that the gods are singularly lik their worshippers and the worshipper are singul rly like their gods. If it must be admitted that the gods exercised a powerful influence over ti e oestiny of their mortal subj- cts, it is not to be denied; that the subjects were largely iutluential in moulding the characters ot their celestial chiefs. The inlhience, in fact, was mutual. There was debt on both tides. It might not be difficult, did time and inclination permit, to discover in the peculiar character of man himself the true cause of this multiplicity and diversity of the objects of his woiship. For fie present we content ourst Ives with noting the facts that th re was multiplicity, that there was diver sity, and that the worshipped and the wor shippers were, bating certaiu necessary pecu liarities, singularly like eacli other. What it is more important aud more suited to our present purpose to notice is, that those divinities aud the systems of religion with which they wero identified had in turn their day of power, lived their thousand years or more or less, exercised while they lived an influence not unmixed with good and evil, and Mien fell back, as all old things must do, into the dim and shadowy past mankind tho while marching on to new and nobler condi tions, to the discovery at once of greater strength and of greater weakness, aud ceasing not, though ho despised the divinities that were, to lean on the strong arm of the Unseen and the Eternal, who, he believed, moulded and controlled his destiny. In the beautiful mythology of Greece, in the scarcely less beau tiful but more vigorous mythology of Rome, and in the sturdy mythology of the Scandina vian North, wo discover the inllueuces which were giving tone and character to the rajes of Europe when Christianity caught them aud launched them forth on their new and glorious I career. j Are we to come to the conclusion that, a3 all the old systems disappeared before Chris tianity, Christianity itself must disappear beloie fcometbing higher and nobler? Ua3 Christianity done its best ? Must it gave place to a new and grander development of the religious principle in man ? Is the time to come when our posterity, living under a more perfect system, shall look into the Christian mythology and marvel at our faith and folly as we now marvel at the faith aud folly of our ancestors ? Strauss, Renan, CoUmso, aud their disciples in the Old World, and the fol lowers of 6uch men as Theodore Barker and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the New for what else is it they are laboring ? There is much in the present aspect of things fitted to create alarm. Never, at least since the Reformation, was the Christian system more vigorously and persistently attacked. Never were missionary records so dull; never was there more of form never lees of spirit. Religion is fashionable this in our large cities especially is one of the mam sources of the Churches' strength. True religious life, there is none. The Churches which are most progressive have eliminated from their standards almost all that is distinc tive and valuable in the Christian system. To be a Christian and to enjoy Christian privi leges, it is no longer necessary to believe iu the divin ie mission of Christ. Inspiration is so explained away that it has ceased to have any meaning. Among the different sections of the Chiistian Church bond of union we find not, but jealousy am petty rivalry are everywhere. The Church of England, the largest and mo3t powerful of all the Protestant denominations, is being torn in pieces by internal dissensions; and the Pope has but recently been attempting to eavanize the Catholic Church into a little temporary vitality by grand spectacular de monstrations and wholesale canonizations. Verily, we are drifting somewhere whither it is difficult to say. Thus much we shall venture to say: If man is to remain a reli eious animal, one of two tinners must follow; either Christianity must awake to newness of life, or take her place with the mythologies of a dead and buried past. We must nave more Christian life, or a new religion. The Ruiihtn Ultimatum. From the JV. Y. Tribune. The crisis in the Eastern question haa come at last. The Ambassador of Russia at Con stantinople, Ignatieff, as we learn by a speoial Cable donated! to tha Tribune, has. In the name of his Government, made a formal de mand for the cession of Crete to Greece, and for the bestowal of equal rights upon all the Christian mihieota of the Porte. These de inanda ar dpclarnd to tin tha ultimatum of the Russian Government, and an answer is asked for within ten davs. Supposing the cable- despatch to be entirely correct as we have no doubt it is the great turning point in the history of Eastern Eu rope has heen reached. Whatever answer the Porte may five to tha ItnHsian ultimatum. the power of the last Mohammedan dynasty in Eurone will be forever broken. Should the dtmand be granted, Crete be united witj Greece, and the f quality of political rtghU for Christians ana Mohammedans be established, European Turkey, in which there are ovr 11,01)0,(00 Christians against only 4,000,000 of Mohammedans, will at once assert itself as a predominantly Christian people, which will soon use this newly-gained influence for the establishment of its entire independence. A submission to the Russian demands involves, moreover, so great a humiliation that it will hardly prove any respite for the downfall of the Turkish rule; but Greece increased by Crete, and now governed by a King who is nearly related to the Czar, will at cure make undisguised efforts for the an nexation of the southern provinces of Euro pean Turkey, Thessaly, and Epirus, in which the Greek race prevails, and for instigating tho Bend-independent prinoes of Ronmauia and Sf rvia to coiiperate with her in expelling the Turks from Europe, and in partitioning the European dominions of the Sultan. The Gov ernment of Constantinople is fully aware that no reforms whatever can prevent these move ments from taking place, for they are now more than a struggle for religious equality; they are, like the similar movements in Italy and Germany, the yearning of a nation for self government and national consolidation. Will the Turkish Government, to which this character of the national movements among its Christian subjects is by no mean3 unknown, gather np courage for precipitating the dtcisive contest? A single-handed war against Russia would, of course, be ended almost as soon as it was commenced. The only possible help for the Turks would again be foreign aid. The Governments of Engluul, Fiance, and Austria undoubtedly sympathize with Tuikey ugaiust Russia; but will they dare to help Turkey? In England, since the Cri mean war, the popular avei siou to interference n foreign quarrels has been steadily on the 'ncrease, and it is not probable that the Tories are willing to defy this popular sentiment, now especially when the passage of the Reform bill has so largely strengthened the radical party, which is almost a unit in its opposition to a new Eastern war. The Emperors of Austria and France have but recently ex changed views on the present aspects of. the Eastern question. The Step now taken by Russia was undoubtedly anticipated, and foilned olio of the subjects of their conversa tions. If we could rely on the boastful lan guage of some semi-official organs of the two empires, France and Austria are determined to make a ttand against a really aggressive policy of Russia in the East. Whether their boast will be carried out must soon become apparent. Any move of this kind on the part of Austria and France would at once bring Prussia to the side of Russia. Thus a war of the grandest dimensions may break out, with Turkey, Austria, and France on the one hand, and Russia and Prussia on the other. The further development of this Russian- Turkifrh complication will be awaited with in tense anxiety. If Turkey declines to comply with tl e Russian demand, and if Russia, in return, threatens with war, efforts will un doubtedly be made, as was the case before the Gei man-Italian war, and in the Luxembourg question, to attempt a peaceable solution by a new European Congress. New delays may thus be caused; but the tide of events will not be tuned. Isolated movements in European poli tics may be novel and surprising In their origin and uncertain as to their end; side issues may lor EOine time draw on attention Irom the great questions of the Old World, and lead to strange, ephemeral combinations; but the final goal toward which European society is driftfng with irresistable force, ap pears in ever greater clearness ty the eyes of the interested nations. We nave no longer au isolated Italian, or German, or Austrian, or Turkish question, but one central question of the reconstruction of Europe. What wise seers predicted as long as fifty years ago is now becoming a fact. The people which was so haughtily looked down upon and despised ly the council of monarchs and statesmen at the "Vienna Congress in 1815, has learned to understand its power. It summons the heirs of its oppressors before the bar of universal, eternal principles, and demands to know on what authority princes can dismember na tions and dispose of them as of chattels, ac cording to their will and pleasure. The deci sions of 1815 are declared null and void; the light of every nation to restore its national unity is more and more acknowledged, and thus the way prepared for a reconstruction of all Europe on the basis of the nationality pi inciple. Tlie Counter Revolution Coming nt Last. Fi om the JV. Y. Herald. It is an old axiom that "revolutions never go backward;" but it is none the loss true that when a revolutionary movement is pushed beyond its legitimate ends, the party concerned in it is demolished by a popular reaction. It was so when the great Fenoh Revolution of 1789 fell into the hands of the Jacobins, atd when they attempted to shape it accsrding to their monstrous notions of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." An equally decisive reaction followed the Puritanical excesses of the Crom wellian Commonwealth of England in the restoration of the monarchy and the Stuarts. How the great American Revolution, marked by the most gigantic and the bloodiest civil war in the history of mankind, and resulting in the extinction of the late Southern slave holding oligarchy, with the abolition of slavery, i3 to be finally shaped, is a question for time to determine. We think, however, from recent events and all the signs of the timt s, that it may be safely assumed that this great revolution has reached its culminating point, and that a counter revolution of publio opinion against the' destructive schemes of the ruling radical faction has fairly set in. The remarkable results of the late California election are but a larger and a ripening deve lopment of the same underlying causes whioh began to find expression at the Connecticut election last spring. The concurrent voice from the recent territorial election in Montana indicates the widening influence of the same general causes, aud Monday's election in Maine substantially tells the same story. The overwhelming success of the Republicans of Maine last year, on the largest popular vote ever polled in the State, on the platform of the pending constitutional amendment 'tis the policy of Congress against the reconstruction theory of President Johnson, we aocepted as an infallible indication of the voioe of all the Northern States iu favor of Congress; and so it turned out to be, from New York to the far West, by results analogous to the results in Maine. Rut what is this constitutional amendment, upon which the popular judgment of the great North was so emphatically given last year in favor of Congress and the Republican party f It is an amendment which provides, among other things, for the disfranchisement of cer tain leading Rebels, subject to a two-thirds vote of Congress, and which provides that each of the States itself may elect whether i4, will have, aud how far it will have, negro representation with negro suffrage, or how far, in counting its people for representation in Congress, it will sacrifice its blarka In exclud ing them from the right of suffrage. Upon SEPTEMBER 11, 1867. Old My e W'liisldes. TIJE LARGEST AND BEbT STOCK OF FINE OLD RYE! IV H I 0 K" ICC IN THE L.AND IS NOW TOSSES3ED BY BE NUT S. H ANN IS & CO., Nob. 218 and 220 SOUTH FEOUT STREET, WHO OFFER TIIK SAME TO THE TRADE IH LOTS OH TKUT ADTAHTA4JEOC9 TERMS. 9 heir Stock of Hjre WMikln, IW BOWD, comprise all the favorite br4 extent, a.i! run tkrovfch tlie various moMtbe of 1H&506, ud of tbla year, up to pint ut date. Lll cial ronlrnrte nrnrie for lot to arrive at PeameyWanla Railroad Depot, ferrlrtkon Line Wliaif.or at lion tied Werihomti, ae partlea may elect. ' this platform, leaving the question of negro suffrage to the several States, the Republicans last year gained their greatest victories greater than the victories of Lincoln. II ut with the rejection of the amendment by tho Rebel States Congress took the bold ground of presciibing for them new conditions of rec in struction, embracing, under a supervising military dictatorship, universal negro suffrage and white Rebel disfranchisements which in evitably point to negro supremacy in the reorganization of the Rebel States. This unexpected and dangerou3 revolution ary experiment has given the definite voice to the California election, whatever may be the fuperficial explanations of the defeated party. Public opinion is crystalized against that ultra-revolutionary joint Committee of Safety Vthich has undertaken, not only to recon struct the South, but the general Govern ment itself, on a system whioh proposes to abolish the Executive Department and the es sential reserved legi3lative powers of the several States. There is also beginning to be a strong active publio sentiment agaiust that Federal political nwliiue organized and put in operation by Mr. Chase in his natioual bank system, and fully maintained by McCulloch, under which these banks receive bounties or perquisites amounting to twenty-five or" thirty millions a year extracted from the p. ckets of the people, and under which we are threatened with a moneyed oligarchy more powerful and cor rupt, and more grasping and insolent, than ever was the slaveholding oligarchy of the South in the height of its demoralizing reign. However patriotic Mr. McCulloch and his chief engineers of the Treasury may be, how ever pure may be those beautiful nymphs of the industrious band of feminine operatives in the Department, the system under whioh the Treasury and our financial affairs is managed needs retrenchment aud reform, and the people begin to feel it. From the causes we have recited a counter revolution has set in against the radical excesses, and experiments, and destructive schemes of the Republican party; and the movement will now go on. We should not be surprised if it were soon to assume the rushing force of the Niagara rapids, and swiftly bear the party in power into the abyss of the Horseshoe Fall. If revolutions never go back wards, this counter revolution against our ultra-revolutionary radicals must run its course to the organization of a new national party, maintaining together the great issues settled by the late war and the form of gov ernment "established in the Federal Consti tution, i The Natioual Debt. From the iV. Y. Tribune. On the 1st of August, 18G5 when our volunteers had not yet been paid off and our army reduced to a peace footing our ascer tained national debt exceeded the fund in the Treasury by the gigantio amount of $2,7.r7,G8!),r)71 It has since been reduced to . 2,492, 7S3,3t55 Actually paid off . . $204, 90 tl, 20(5 or very nearly one-tenth of the total. Whoever, therefore, asserts that We can never pay fairly and fully, does so in the teeth ot the tact that in the last two years, with a large military force, nearly half our country Tavfcged by four years of desolating civil war, our industry disorganized, ten States out of gear, the passions of the late conflict still active, and with poor harvests, we have paid a tithe of the sum, and that without thereby fending one child hungry to bed. Of course, we can do far better henceforth. "It is the first step that costs," and we have taken that bravely and successfully. When any villain suggests some slimy mode of cheating the national creditors, let us say, "Get thee behind me, Satan I" and press Bteadily on I The Pardoning Power of the Preeldent. From the JV. Y. World. Whether President Johnson has exceeded his powers in issuing the new amnesty procla mation is evidently a different question from whether the proclamation is a wise aud well timed exercise of authority. It is the first of these questions only which we propose to dis cuss in this article ; reserving the seoond. The Times has a long article denying the light of the President, in which it says of i'ne pioclamation : "It la a deliberate defiance otJOmgress and its authority, a repuulailou or its eunoted lawn, and an amertlou of tlie l'reblUent's determina tion to take tbe work of reconstruction luto his own bands. It is an attempt to abrogate tho conditions of reconstruction pn-scrl'jed by Con greBK.niid to Invest the Rebel element with tbe means of breaking down the restnituts whictx buve been prudently Imposed on tho prelimi nary workings of recouHtrucllou. It Is au Inso lent ute of a power which CoiireHS. iu Decem ber lata, explicitly took away. Air. Ijlncolu sougl t and obtulned legislation to authorize Ills pi ccliunnllouB of limited pardon and amueHly; Mr. Johnson dares to proclaim almost univer sal pardon and amnesly, although the measure under which Mr. Lincoln acted has been specln callv repealed. Congress has Holeinnly ntld that no Buch proclamation sl'uil be Issued; Mr. John sen flings tho opinions of liluokley aud Uluck in tlie lace ot Congress and the oouuiry, aud o'sims for hla will the authority or the supreme law. W'Lut more flagrant form could executive usurpation take ehort of a dictatorship? ' This is rather a specimen of raving than of reasoning. It is quite true that Congress, last winter, repealed that section of the Confisca tion act which undertook to confer on the President authority to Issue amnesty procla mations; but as the President possesses this authority by the Constitution independently of Congress, the repeal is of no consequence except as signifying the will of Congress that he shall not exercise one of his constitutional pierogatives. Rut what right ha Congress to say that the President shall not do what the Constitution says he may do ? The Timet, with surprising hardihood," or more sur prising ignorance, alumis that President Lincoln sought authority from Congress to issue his limited airnesty proclamation. Bo far from seeking such authority, he pre pared a veto of the bill which pretended to confer it. He did not, iudeed; intend to veto it on that ground, but in the course of (he mehsage he alluded to tlie section pretending o confer this grant of power in terms of almost sneering disparagement. Whn he afterwards issued his amnesty proclamation, he rested his right to do so directly and solely on the Constitution, in the message he at the same time sent to Congress. In the proclama tion itself he alludes to the pretended grant of authority, but in such & way as to show that he tolerated it only because it was in accord ance with what was already granted by the Constitution. His language was, that it "ac cords with the well-established judicial expo sition of the pardoning power;" which was merely a different mode of saying that it pre tended to confer the same power which the Courts had declared belongs to the President by the Constitution without any legislation. From all which it appears that Mr. Liuooln's authority and example were against the doc trine contended for by the limes. Rut wo have far higher authority than that of Mr. Lincoln, liefore confuting the Times, we will allow that journal to present its exposition in its own language: "The most elastic interpretation of the power to pardon couferied by the Constitution does not fairly iuslify the proclamation we publish this morning. The common sense version of the constitutional provision limits It to indi vidual cases, and deems it the remisslou of a penalty which haa been legally pronounced. Trial, conviction, sentence all must precede the l'reKiuenr exercise of pardon, which iu the mature of things contemplates exceptional circumstances la aililgatlon of penalties, and an individual scrutiny in roiaiiou to them. What has this to do with amnesty? What warrant docs a constitutional authority to remit penalties, decreed iu course of law, give for a general act of oblivion, proclaimed iu advance of trial, and iu direct contravention of law?" It is here contended that the pardoning power conferred by the Constitution does not authorize the President to issue an amnesty at all, nor any pardon previous to triaL oonj viction, and sentence. That the Constitution was understood in a totally different sense by its framers is evident from the exposition and defense of this part of it in the Federalist. If the Timet will even affect to doubt that the Federalist concedes that the Constitution con fers a broad amnesty power upon the President without the concurrence of Congress, and jus tifies the grant to him to the total exclusion of the national legislature, we will establish it in such a manner as to render doubt ab surd and denial ridiculous. Rut we see no use in encumbering our space with long quotations to prove what no candid person capable of understand ing English will controvert. The opponents of the Constitution, while it was pending before the people, objected to the pardoning power conferred on the President, that it included treason, in pardoning which they thought that one or both branches of Congress should be associated with the President. Among the other arguments by which the Fidiralist proved that the Constitution was better as it stood in conferring the pardoning power exclusively upon the President, is one founded on its better adaptation to cases re quiring a general amnesty. People may be curious to know by what wonderful process the writer in the limes has grown to under stand the Constitution so much bettor than those who made it. It i3 a matter of undeniable history that Washington pardoned the Pennsylvania whisky rebels by a general amnesty, without any Congressional authorization, aud previous to any tiial or sentence. Was Washington a usurper of power which did not belong to hi'm f Any poison who will be at the trouble to examine the Opinions of the Attorney Generals will find every part of the Times' doc trine on the pardoning power flatly con tradicted. Uow could it have happened that a succession of able and accomplished lawyers, under no temptation or bias, should have been so mistaken 1 We' make no quotations; but we will overwhelm with quotations any body who is rash enough to dispute the cor rectness of our statement. The most eminent lawyers who have filled tho office of Attorney General have been of opinion that the Presi dent could, without any Congressional per mission, pardon singly or in large groups, before conviction or after, according to his sole judgment and discretion. oo.nr.q- classes a OF TAB EEST FRINCII PLATE, In Everv Stvle of Frames, ON HAND OR MADE TO ORDER. NEW AHT GALLERY, F. BOUHDiiCO., 8 2 lm2p No. OM AllCil Htreet. D A L T I M O f! E 1 i ' IMPROVED BASE BURNING l; P1KE-PLACK HEITEB, WfTHT SIa.falue antt ltluuituatlnff I I W. I '1 i.u iiL.nrfiil a. .A Tuifu. t lul.l- til TTm. TO be had Wlioluoulv unu iiot.iil ol J. ft. tx KU, 9lui2p No. lu UAKHtl' fcirtel. 1'aU.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers